I walked into Staples yesterday for some file folders and came out 12 minutes later with a new desk chair. Now, you hardly care that I have reluctantly traded in the small, hard piece of wood I’ve have sat on for the past couple decades (Seriously! My dad stained it to match my desk when I was ten.), but my entire work worldview has been drastically improved via lumbar support–and I don’t even know what that is! I was wandering in the wilderness of office supplies and BAM! I was saved. I had no idea such cushiony goodness was possible. Productivity is way up.
And that, indulgent readers, leads me to my actual point. I read Howard Mandel’s response to Amanda Ameer, and particularly noted the part where he suggested that one thing women may want when it comes to attracting them to jazz is “comfortable, clean and affordable music venues.” Based on personal observation, I’m not sure a good squirt of disinfectant is necessarily the issue, but it got me thinking about the question of comfort when it comes to experiencing art. Things that would seem on the surface to be trivial–I mean, who cares about leg room when profundity is on stage?–are the things we tend not to discuss but privately weigh when making decisions about how the ticket budget will be spent. Very long shows (four hours!), very late shows (doors at 11 p.m.!), shows in venues that are above my pay grade (what do you even wear to that?): Yeah, I’ve skipped a few of those out of concern for my own personal comfort. So is Mandel’s proposal for welcoming the ladies correct?
Of course, more than a well-mopped floor and a pretty bathroom, what Mandel is talking about in his post is the psychic comfort patrons experience–that feeling of belonging and being welcome, where you’ve already picked a favorite wine on the list and someone in the crowd knows your name. You know how things work in this tribe, perhaps even consider yourself a bona fide member. Free time is a scarce resource for most, and at the end of the day who wants to spend it in a place that makes you feel awkward and uncomfortable, no matter how intriguing the art on offer?
Now, you may argue that challenge is part of the deal when it comes to art. And I can go with you there, but when and why is it needed and when is it not? A few weeks ago I was a contestant in the Take a Friend to the Orchestra project, and here again I think if you’re at all concerned about the makeup of [insert art form here]’s audiences, offer yourself up as neighborhood welcome wagon. Not every venue posts the guidelines at the door. I love going to foreign countries; I love it best when there’s a friend on the other end of my flight who speaks the local dialect and makes sure I understand how to get around. It’s ultimately not the fact that I’m a married, middle-class white girl that keeps me turned off by certain events, it’s really more just that silly first-day-of-school concern that I’ll get lost on the way to gym and be stuck eating lunch by myself. Or that, like the desk chair incident, I simply have no idea how good the new will be and so have no reason yet to pay it any attention at all.